Mute Records releases the non-album single Shake the Disease by Depeche Mode. 
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Mute Records releases the non-album single Shake the Disease by Depeche Mode.
Space Shuttle Challenger lifts off on a week-long mission to perform experiments in the cargo-bay-mounted Spacelab laboratory module. Aboard Challenger for the Spacelab 3 flight are Commander Robert Overmyer, Pilot Frederick Gregory, mission specialists Don Lind, Norm Thagard, and William Thornton, and payload specialists Lodewijk van den Berg and Taylor Wang. Following the landing gear damage experienced by Discovery on its last flight, Challenger makes its landing at Edwards Air Force Base.
The fourth episode of The Max Headroom Show premieres, starring Matt Frewer. (This is the music video/talk show series, not the American-made drama series featuring the same character.) Roger Daltrey (The Who) guest stars.
Atari releases the arcade video game The Empire Strikes Back, based on the movie of the same name; this is a conversion kit allowing arcade operators to freshen aging Star Wars coin-ops with new levels and game elements.
The fifth episode of The Max Headroom Show premieres, starring Matt Frewer. (This is the music video/talk show series, not the American-made drama series featuring the same character.)
The sixth episode of The Max Headroom Show premieres, starring Matt Frewer. (This is the music video/talk show series, not the American-made drama series featuring the same character.) Boy George (Culture Club) guest stars. This concludes the show’s first season.
The first episode of the half-hour science fiction/fantasy anthology series Ray Bradbury Theater premieres on premium cable channel HBO, starring James Coco and Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!, Police Squad) in a script adapted by Ray Bradbury from one of his own short stories. 
NASA engineers complete a multi-year project to completely reprogram Voyager 2 during the unmanned space probe’s five-year journey from Saturn to Uranus. A planet receiving only a fraction of the sunlight that made photography possible at Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus requires much longer exposures, slower camera shutter speeds, and incredibly precise camera tracking. To compensate for the extreme lag in comunications to and from Uranus, data compression algorithms are devised using techniques that simply didn’t exist at the time of Voyager 2’s construction and original programming, but the compression scheme is an all-or-nothing proposition: it ties up Voyager 2’s backup computer, meaning that a failure of the main computer during a critical maneuver could send the probe off-course, perhaps even colliding with the bodies it intends to study.
NBC airs the 19th and final episode of Kenneth Johnson’s sci-fi series V, starring Marc Singer, Faye Grant, and Diane Badler. This episode, skipped early in the show’s running order, inexplicably appears months after the cancellation of the series.
MCA Records releases John Barry‘s soundtrack from the movie Out Of Africa.
Mindscape releases the educational computer game The Halley Project for the Apple II home computer system, designed by Omar Khudari and Tom Snyder. The game’s release is timed to coincide with increasing public awareness of the upcoming appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1986.
The second episode of the half-hour science fiction/fantasy anthology series Ray Bradbury Theater premieres on premium cable channel HBO, starring William Shatner (Star Trek, T.J. Hooker) in a script adapted by Ray Bradbury from one of his own short stories.
The Soviet Union launches Soyuz T-13 on a mission to salvage space station Salyut 7, which has gone unoccupied for more than half a year and has lost power and attitude control. Cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh find the station dead in space, tumbling slowly, forcing them to use their Soyuz vehicle’s thrusters to match the station’s erratic motion to allow a manual docking. Inside the station, the crew finds frigid but breathable air, and again the Soyuz engines are fired to orient the station so its solar panels catch enough sunlight to charge its batteries. After a week of work carried out in bulky clothing befitting a Russian winter, the cosmonauts reactivate the station fully, scoring a major space first – the first-ever docking with, and repair of, a fully deactivated space station. For the first time, a Salyut crew spends some overlap time with the next long-term crew, a step toward the uninterrupted occupancy that will become commonplace aboard Mir, Salyut’s successor. Savinykh remains aboard Salyut 7 for 168 days, overlapping into the next long-term station crew, while Dzhanibekov departs 110 days into his stay.
Scotti Bros. Records releases the third album by Weird Al Yankovic, Dares To Be Stupid. The album features the singles “Like A Surgeon” and “I Want A New Duck”.
A&M Records releases the first solo album by Sting, The Dream of the Blue Turtles. The album features the singles “If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free” and “Fortress Around Your Heart”.
IRS Records releases R.E.M.‘s third album, Fables of the Reconstruction, featuring the singles “Driver 8” and “Can’t Get There From Here”.
The landing module of the Vega 1 unmanned space probe arrives at the planet Venus, though some of its on-board experiment packages activate during descent, rather than activating after contact with the surface, and little data is returned. Thanks to a gravity assist from a close flyby of Venus, the Vega 1 “mothership” continues past the planet toward a 1986 rendezvous with Halley’s Comet.
The landing module of the Vega 2 unmanned space probe successfully lands on Venus, gathering and analyzing soil samples and transmitting its findings back to Earth before the heat and atmospheric pressure destroy it within an hour. The terrain it lands on is found to be composed of rock resembling the surface of Earth’s moon. The Vega 2 “mothership” continues past Venus, en route to a rendezvous with Halley’s Comet.
Sire Records releases the Talking Heads album Little Creatures, featuring the singles “And She Was”, “Road To Nowhere” and “Perfect World”.
Space Shuttle Discovery returns to orbit for a week-long flight including the deployment of three communications satellites. American, Mexican and Saudi Arabian satellites are launched via payload assist modules. Discovery crew consists of Commander Daniel Brandenstein, Pilot John Creighton, mission specialists Shannon Lucid, John Fabian and Steven Nagel, and payload specialists Patrick Baudry and Sultan Salman Al-Saud (the first Saudi Arabian national to fly in space).
Atari releases a port of Crystal Castles for the Atari VCS, a home version of Atari’s graphically elaborate coin-op game.
The European Space Agency launches the unmanned Giotto space probe, designed to rendezvous with and observe Halley’s Comet during the comet’s pass through the inner solar system in 1986. The first-ever ESA mission aiming for a target beyond Earth orbit, Giotto is based loosely on the design of ESA’s GEOS satellites, with thick aluminum and Kevlar shielding to help the probe survive potential impacts with cometary matter as it closes in on Halley’s nucleus. Giotto is the first spacecraft ever to use Earth itself for a gravity assist maneuver (which later becomes standard practice with such space vehicles as Galileo, Messenger and Juno). It will go on to become the first vehicle to visit a comet.
The 13th and final episode of the Hammer Studios-produced horror anthology series Hammer House Of Mystery And Suspense airs on ITV; the series will be shown later in the U.S. under the title Fox Mystery Theatre. Barbi Benton, Gareth Hunt (The New Avengers), and Peter Wyngarde (Flash Gordon, Department S) guest star.
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ITV airs the 101st episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. Susan Strasberg guest stars.
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Tales Of The Unexpected now streaming on Amazon Prime
ITV airs the 102nd episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. Bud Cort guest stars.
More about Tales Of The Unexpected in theLogBook.com Store
Tales Of The Unexpected now streaming on Amazon Prime
Atari releases the arcade game Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the United States, giving players the chance to hate pixellated snakes from a safe distance.
BBC Radio 4 begins airing the six-part Doctor Who radio drama Slipback, starring Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, and Valentine Dyall, as part of the “Pirate Radio 4” programming block. The story is written by Doctor Who’s current television script editor (and occasional novelist) Eric Saward. This is the final recorded radio drama performance for Valentine Dyall, who died weeks before broadcast.
ITV airs the 103rd episode of the anthology series Tales Of The Unexpected. Joan HAckett guest stars in the eighth season finale; the series will resume in late 1987.
More about Tales Of The Unexpected in theLogBook.com Store
Tales Of The Unexpected now streaming on Amazon Prime
For the first and only time in the history of the shuttle program, Space Shuttle Challenger does an in-flight abort maneuver – in this case, an Abort To Orbit (ATO) following the premature shutdown of one of the shuttle’s main engines. The potentially catastrophic shutdown of a second engine is narrowly avoided by a sharp-eyed ground controller, and Challenger makes it to orbit and the rest of the mission is conducted normally.
GNP Crescendo releases the first-ever CD of Alexander Courage’s music from the original Star Trek television series, presenting selections from the two pilot episodes, The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before. This is the first time that music from the original series has been presented, other than countless recordings and remakes of the main title theme.